A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange

‘Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.’ So says the prison chaplain, perhaps the only voice of reason in Anthony Burgess’s most celebrated work. Both a horrific satire of youth culture and an ingenious examination of social justice and government control, A Clockwork Orange has left an indelible, boot-shaped mark on the popular and literary culture of the late 20th century. Stanley Kubrick’s notorious 1971 film — with its iconic imagery and enduring controversies — has overshadowed a work whose philosophical paradoxes and astonishing linguistic invention are some of literature’s most inspired.

‘I do not know of any other writer who has done so much with language as Mister Burgess has done here’WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Alex, ‘Your Humble Narrator’, and his droogs terrorise a nightmarish London of the near future. He describes his life of ‘britvas’ (razors) and ‘twenty- to-one’ (fun / gang violence) in Nadsat, an idiom fusing Cockney rhyming slang, corrupted Russian and invented polyglot constructions. The language is spellbinding, often Joycean: ‘trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed’. As introducer Irvine Welsh writes, ‘the “Nadsat” spoken by Alex does more than draw readers to admire his linguistic craft: it compels them to traverse the mechanics of their own comprehension’.

Production Details

Bound in textured paper, blocked with a design by Ben Jones

Set in Bembo with Shelton Slab display

240 pages; frontispiece and 6 colour illustrations

9½" x 6½"

Plain Black Slipcase

Illustrator Ben Jones discusses A Clockwork Orange

The Folio Society's new edition of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, introduced by Irvine Welsh. Here illustrator by Ben Jones talks about this fascinating commission and how he went about separating the text from Stanley Kubrick's iconic 1971 film adaptation.

'My first impression of the book when taking it out of its packaging was how perfect it felt in my hands. The black alligator skin binding with its metallic orange illustration really highlights what you are about to experience while reading the book. The final production of the book has gone beyond my expectations'BEN JONES

Clickhereto read a blog post by Ben Jones, discussing his work on A Clockwork Orange.

A fascinating edition to explore Anthony Burgess’s most celebrated work

This edition follows the restored text of 2012, which includes the 21st chapter excluded from early US editions of the book. Also featured here is an expanded glossary, compiled with reference to Burgess’s handwritten notes and letters to his editors. Comprehensive notes from Burgess’s biographer Andrew Biswell explore allusions in the text, including references to the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins. The binding simulates alligator skin, while Ben Jones’s sinister collage illustrations are reminiscent
of cautionary fairy tales.

A gripping, startling dystopian vision

In the novel, Anthony Burgess creates a dissonant, hyper-real
but easily recognisable world. The violence is slapstick and theatrical,
the language a beautiful challenge that pays off within the
first dozen pages and just keeps on giving. William S. Burroughs
wrote: ‘I do not know of any other writer who has done as much
with language as Mister Burgess has done here.’ The ‘Nadsat’
spoken by Alex does more than draw readers to admire his linguistic
craft: it compels them to traverse the mechanics of their
own comprehension, whereby they must deploy their grasp of
syntax and dredge up any etymological knowledge they might
possess as a means of determining the sense of those unfamiliar
words from their contexts. The stylised uber-formality and
recurring bathos of Alex’s voice renders this process both sinister
and occasionally hilarious.

Alex and his droogs wander an out-of-kilter city in a
dystopian future Britain. Published in 1962, when we ‘never had
it so good’, according to Prime Minister Macmillan, A Clockwork
Orange is both an endorsement of and riposte to the reactionary
responses to the burgeoning youth culture and the moral panic
that has attended gangs of supposedly lawless, feral young men
since, well, for ever. In the post-war affluent TV age, the persistence
and increasing stylisation of urban violence into youth cults
seemed to present a new set of challenges to the bourgeois order.
Burgess, almost a self-made reactionary, does what all great
novelists and artists should do: antagonise bourgeois precepts, be
they of the right or the left. With its exposé of the hypocrisy
of rehabilitation, this is as much a political novel as Orwell’s
Nineteen Eighty-Four.An extract from Irvine Welsh's introduction

"This edition is perhaps the best iteration I have seen of this book. It is generously proportioned at 9 x 6 inches or so, comes in a slipcase and is bound in a textured sort of faux snakeskin and feat..." [read more]

"This edition is perhaps the best iteration I have seen of this book. It is generously proportioned at 9 x 6 inches or so, comes in a slipcase and is bound in a textured sort of faux snakeskin and features an emobssed print of a silhouetted head containing clockwork parts.
Inside is a treat for the old glazzes, the paper is textured, the print friendly to the peepers and, viddy this well, there is even, like an introduction by none other than Irvine Welsh. This introduction correctly places the book in, like context, and rightly grants it the status of a classic.
But, my droogs, and this is real horrorshow, there is more. Throughout the book is a series of illustrations showing dear Alex and his droogies, like, drinking the old moloko or indulging in a bit of the old twenty-to-one.
Also, this could be the endgame as far as editions go, not only is the restored ending in there but, the editor has, like, listened to a Burgess audio reading of the book and has added some of the nadsat from that. What this means, o' brothers, is that the book reads like something restored to heavenly and sublime beauty. Even, like, at the end, there is notes on some of the phrases and, like, a glossary of nadsat slang just in case you can't grasp the language too horrorshow.
This is a book to keep, to cherish and to pull out of the book shelf when you are looking for some clever word play and subversive behaviour.
A brilliant edition of an excellent book published with a deft and thoughtful touch.
" [hide full review]